{"id":40917,"date":"2008-05-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/narrow-stairs\/"},"modified":"2008-05-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-26T00:00:00","slug":"narrow-stairs","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/narrow-stairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Narrow Stairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wanted to love this album. I was almost entirely sure I would <\/i>love this album; I\u2019ve spent the past three years since Plans <\/i>was released playing through Death Cab For Cutie\u2019s catalogue, memorizing these Washington-born indie rockers\u2019 transcendent blend of sorrow and hopefulness. According to guitarist and producer Chris Walla, their latest release (the band\u2019s seventh album and second major label release) Narrow Stairs, <\/i>is less cerebral and mapped-out than their previous effort, and this new jammy impulsiveness shines through in the instrumentation: songs cut off abruptly and feedback washes past the thick guitars, giving the music a sort of jarring, closed-in feeling that fits in nicely with the more morose turn this album has taken, not to mention its sheer creepiness at times. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

So far, so good. But where Stairs <\/i>tends to falter is where Death Cab has always shone: the lyrics. Frontman Ben Gibbard has been the poet for a certain kind of sadness since Death Cab debuted in 1997, his brand of sorrow always laced with a hopeless romanticism and a quiet appreciation of life\u2019s beauty. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

And on some tracks, it\u2019s still there. \u00a0Opener \u201cBixby Canyon Bridge\u201d is a stunning soundscape along the lines of \u201cMarching Bands Of Manhattan\u201d from Plans;<\/i> swirling synths and slowly building drums back Gibbard\u2019s soaring, plaintive vocals as he sings of climbing to Big Sur (in a nod to Jack Kerouac\u2019s novel of the same name) but finding himself ultimately \u201cno closer to any kind of truth \/ As I must assume was the case for you.\u201d It\u2019s expansive and achingly lovely, everything you\u2019d expect from the band, and its follow-up, \u201cI Will Possess Your Heart,\u201d manages to do it one better. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Released as an eight-minute single, \u201cI Will Possess Your Heart\u201d can really just be summed up in one word: creepy. It\u2019s solely a slow-burning instrumental song for its first half, until the vocals kick in and Gibbard half-pleads, half-promises \u201cYou got to spend some time, love \/ You got to spend some time with me,\u201d creating a full-out menace that\u2019s miles away from the quietly desperate Death Cab of previous albums. Though Walla talked of this album containing \u201clots of blood,\u201d I really wish they would\u2019ve explored this vein a little further.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Other standouts include \u201cNo Sunlight,\u201d whose peppy beat provides a nice counterpoint as the lyrics dip increasingly towards bitterness, \u201cGrapevine Fires\u201d with its lush lyricism and downbeat touches of electric piano and organ, and \u201cYou Can Do Better Than Me,\u201d a short sleigh-bell infused jaunt where a man decides to stay in an unfulfilling relationship \u201cout of fear of dying alone.\u201d <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Still, for all the moments of near-brilliance on here, <\/i>the band lapse too often into heavy-handedness, something which was altogether absent on their previous efforts. \u201cTalking Bird\u201d simply meanders (and really, the bird metaphor is nothing short of cheesy), and for the punchiness of its backbeats, \u201cYour New Twin Sized Bed\u201d is too on-the-nose (\u201cYou look so defeated lying there in your new twin size bed \/ With a single pillow underneath your single head.\u201d) <\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cPity And Fear,\u201d meanwhile, sets the tale of a one-night stand to an almost claustrophobic, tabla-accented beat, but again, it\u2019s all a little too overt to truly make its mark and there\u2019s so much left unexplored. Closer \u201cThe Ice Is Getting Thinner\u201d is more restrained, Gibbard\u2019s voice muted and the instrumentation trickling through in flourishes, but still, the repeated metaphor tends to knock the listener in the head rather than accent the rest of the track\u2019s subtlety. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

For the most part, Narrow Stairs<\/i> is a patchy effort; those intimate, indelible moments we\u2019ve come to expect from Death Cab For Cutie are still present and as wonderful as always, just in lesser supply. Coming on the heels of Plans <\/i>and Transatlanticism, <\/i>both of which <\/i>showcased a band able to traverse all rooms of the heart, something feels like it\u2019s gone missing along the way, here, leaving the sense that there\u2019s more to be explored that never quite gets reckoned with. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth your time, to be sure, but on the other hand, I can\u2019t really see myself playing this one nonstop for the next three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":29353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7010],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-40917","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-death-cab-for-cutie","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40917"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}